3rd Party Library Browser / Insertion Tool

[BKE]

It seems most of us use a host of 3rd party productivity tools. I found this nice tool for inserting objects in Max:

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc...et-browser-pro

It is very powerful, but not supported. Does anyone know of another product comparable to this?
Thanks,
Brian

[tooves]

http://3d-kstudio.com/project-manager/

I tested this out a while ago but haven't made the leap yet. Seems pretty solid.

[BKE]

Excellent find, thank you for sharing! I am going to try the Demo.

[elivnA]

I'm also looking for an easy way to organise and place my foliage in 3dsmax. Am I correct in concluding that this doesn't support vrmesh files? Is there any other way to easily place materialised vrmesh objects from a library?

[Neilg]

I'm also looking for an easy way to organise and place my foliage in 3dsmax. Am I correct in concluding that this doesn't support vrmesh files? Is there any other way to easily place materialised vrmesh objects from a library?

Forest pro

Their library system is great - we spent a couple of days converting our entire plant library to proxies and creating thumbnails for it and it's made a world of difference.

[Morne]

Forest pro

Their library system is great - we spent a couple of days converting our entire plant library to proxies and creating thumbnails for it and it's made a world of difference.

So you can create and add your own stuff into the library, it doesnt have to be HQ Plants or Xfrog stuff?

[Itoosoft]

So you can create and add your own stuff into the library, it doesnt have to be HQ Plants or Xfrog stuff?

Absolutely yes. Besides the included library editor, we use plain XML and standard folders as format, so you can do massive editing or automatize the library creation:

http://www.itoosoft.com/forestpack/r...ary_editor.php

[Pixelcon]

Yeah forest pack's library system is sweet. Creating custom thumbnails and getting a big, working, quick library is sweet. there are a couple of things that could be improved but it's solid.

While we actually have an Itoo rep here I might as well put them down here:
1. Be able to have multiple objects contained in one library item.
2. Combine duplicate materials merged in from multiple library items. I had assumed the 'consolidate materials' function would do this but it doesnt seem to.
3. Be able to change object size independently.

The reasons for the above suggestions is that I use general "ground cover" objects so being able to merge them in at once would be faster, having duplicate materials combined, results in fewer multimatteelement passes (when auto generated) and having the odd library item that is too big in relation to the rest can break the look of the ground cover setup. I know you can re-size objects manually but perhaps there could be a "lock proportions" check button related to the width/height options or even a per-object scale spinner box.

Either way it's a great system. We're looking to create a set of libraries that can be shared with our world-wide studios. Because it's just an xml system, keeping the paths all relative will mean there's no extra work for other artists around the place, they just install, point to the right place on our servers and start creating.

[Neilg]

being able to merge them in at once would be faster,

Hold down ctrl when selecting the objects from the library

[Pixelcon]

oh I know about that, but for example instead of having 30 library items that contain slightly different rocks seems a bit superfluous when they could all be in one single library item.

[Itoosoft]

You could store a Preset instead separated items.

A Preset is basically a full Forest object, including all Custom Objects and parameters. The procedure to create it is exactly the same, but saving a Forest instead a mesh.

[Pixelcon]

That's probably a wise thing to do. Thanks for the suggestion, Carlos!

[trixian]

I love how the Itoo guys seem to be lurking in the shadows, and as soon as someone mentions something related to them, they chime in with some good tips and info.

[Itoosoft]

I love how the Itoo guys seem to be lurking in the shadows, and as soon as someone mentions something related to them, they chime in with some good tips and info.

We have many customers on this forum, besides i read it regularly for learning more about VRay.

[tricky]

We're looking for a solid 3d model asset library viewer, and this thread suggest ForestPro might be an answer. I'm trying to set it up following the instructions Carlos linked to but having teething problems.

1) I have started by creating a library path on a mapped network drive: T:\MODELS\FORESTPRO_LIBRARY and called this 'BLINK MODELS'
2) In the nav pane on the lef I see the BLINK MODELS folder. Within this, I have created a library called 'Seating'
3) With this library selected, I have created a 3D Object
4) I right-click and enter the properties of this first item
5) Under 3D Model/Max File I choose a Max file that resides on our network and click 'open'
6) I then get a warning 'It is not possible to do this operation if a Max object is being created. Please, open the Library Browser from the Max Modify panel and try again.'

I don't understand this - what should I do?